IDEA Public Schools was awarded the $250,000 Broad Prize Monday for its efforts to inject hope and opportunity into the educational lives of some 24,000 mostly Hispanic and low-income Texas students in San Antonio, Austin and the Rio Grande Valley. Accepting the award, co-founder and CEO Tom Torkelson gave an impassioned speech in defense of the...

By the time Alvaro Quintero and Jose Rodriguez reached the end of their senior year, they were no longer Alvaro and Jose. “Before we left, we got our names changed to Harvard and Yale, respectively,” Rodriguez recalled. “That is how we were referred to.” At once they had lost their familiar identity in the halls...